Norwegian Officer Jan Baalsrud Escapes from Nazis in the Arctic

Even during those long months when the sun peers over the horizon night and day, the Arctic wastelands in northern Norway remain among the darkest places on earth.

A vast expanse of inscrutable crags, battered by biting winds and white walls of snow, it is a place where life of any kind receives a less than warm welcome. Yet in the spring of 1943, one man flirted with death there for more than two months, forced to contend not only with the elements, but an occupying Nazi force intent on killing him.
Jan Baalsrud was a young instrument maker who was asked to help the anti-Nazi resistance in Norway during WWII. During his trip on board a ship in the icy Norwegian waters, German soldiers showered his boat with bullets, killing everyone on board except him. He managed to dive into the water, with only one boot and sock, minus his big toe that had been shot off.

On the run, Jan Baalsrud was dependent on the strangers prepared to help, even though they knew they would be killed should anyone find out. Blinded by the snow and severely crippled by frostbite, he was even forced to amputate all but one of his toes. But somehow he survived.Read more »

Although Hitler was a Chancellor, he didn’t have as much power. The Communist party was still a threat. Then a key event happened. The Reichstag – German Parliament – was burned a few months after Hitler came to the power and the blame was assigned to the Communists. Following the burning, President Hindenburg clamped down the Communists and repressive measures were taken on all other political parties.

How Adolf Hitler Came to Power

The story of why Hitler came to power is about the reasons why the German people lost their senses and allowed a vicious madman to come to power. Hitler was a brilliant speaker, and his eyes had a peculiar power over people. He was a good organiser and politician. He was a driven, unstable man, who believed that he had been called by God to become dictator of Germany and rule the world. This kept him going when other people might have given up. His self-belief persuaded people to believe in him.

Hitler’s rise to power was based upon long-term factors – resentment in the German people, the weakness of the Weimar system – which he exploited through propaganda (paid for by his rich, Communist-fearing backers), the terror of his stormtroopers, and the brilliance of his speeches.

During the ‘roaring twenties’ Germans ignored this vicious little man with his programme of hatred. But when the Great Depression ruined their lives, they voted for him in increasing numbers. Needing support, and thinking he could control Hitler, President Hindenburg made the mistake in January 1933 of giving Hitler the post of Chancellor.

“Personnel from Sarasota Army Air Field hose down a P-51 Mustang that was returned to base after catching fire while in flight. Base officials had directed the pilot to head for Sarasota Bay and ditch the aircraft, but the pilot insisted on returning the plane to base. Upon landing, the pilot jumped from the moving, flaming plane while base personnel extinguished the fire. Upon investigating the aircraft, North American Aviation technical representative Sherman Studer determined that one of the plane’s fuel pumps had been sabotaged. According to Studer’s recollections, the installing mechanic was later arrested, and he confessed to sabotaging this and 18 other P-51 Mustangs.”

When the Nazis tried to Invade America

Normandy. Anzio. Guadalcanal. Okinawa. Those are some of the historic landing sites for World War II invasions, legendary names that should never be forgotten. But there were lesser landings, as well, such as at Amagansett, New York, and Ponte Verdra Beach, Florida. That’s right. There were at least two mini-landings in America, engineered by Germans, of course, not Allies.

With rare exception, American involvement in World War II was focused in Europe and the Pacific. Few acts of war took place on the North American continent, a function primarily of the United States’ geographic isolation. But this did not keep the Germans from attempting to bring the war Stateside. In fact, on June 13, 1942, four German operatives landed at Amagansett, New York, toward the eastern tip of Long Island. Three days later, another four Nazis came ashore at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, just south of Jacksonville.

A prisoner hung by the knees, hands and feet tied. Behind him a SS man beating him with a whip. Wilhelm Boger, a guard in the “politischen Abteilung” from Auschwitz-Birkenau invented this torture which was called the “Bogerschauckel”. Most prisoners didn’t survive this torture.

Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images.A photo titled ‘Me As Al Jolson’, from an album belonging to Hitler’s companion Eva Braun (1912 – 1945), depicting her in blackface as American actor Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer’, Munich, Germany, 1937. Braun, enjoyed private parties with friends and liked to watch American films such as ‘Gone with the Wind’.

Jews in The Grove at Auschwitz awaiting their turn to walk into the gas chambers

Miss 16 is studying history and after a week or so looking into the Second World War and the Holocaust these are the 11 things she came up with as lessons we can all learn from.

Why 11? Because.

The question she was asked was: What did studying the history of WWII teach you?

1. Hitler was a dictator2. Appeasement doesn’t work3. When someone says don’t invade or there will be war you should listen to them.4. When the Americans get involved serious stuff goes down5. Backstabbing is a bad strategy6. Media can influence people even if it’s false information7. If you don’t know who is good or bad you can’t really do anything to stop the bad8. It’s easier to lie and trick people than it is to force them to do things9. Give people hope and they will follow you even if you’re an asshole10. Most soldiers will follow orders even if they are against their beliefs11. War is expensive Read more »

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.

The face of a woman who survived the Holocaust and is still alive today. Her story is so bizarre that it is hard to believe that it is fact not fiction as the irony of what happened is just incredible.

An 80-year-old Jewish woman has revealed the astonishing story of how she came to front a Nazi party propaganda campaign in the 1930s after her baby picture was selected by the party as the “ideal Aryan” child.

– http://www.itv.com/news

Aryan: In colloquial English, the word has been adopted in accordance with Nazi racial theory’s appropriation of the term to describe persons corresponding to the “Nordic” physical ideal of Nazi Germany (the “master race” ideology).[n 1]

If you agree with me that’s nice, but what I really want to achieve is to make you question the status quo, look between the lines and do your own research. Do not be a passive observer in this game we call life.

‘I am a Socialist,’ Hitler told Otto Strasser in 1930, ‘and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow’.

No one at the time would have regarded it as a controversial statement. The Nazis could hardly have been more open in their socialism, describing themselves with the same terminology as our own SWP: National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Almost everyone in those days accepted that fascism had emerged from the revolutionary Left. Its militants marched on May Day under red flags. Its leaders stood for collectivism, state control of industry, high tariffs, workers’ councils. Around Europe, fascists were convinced that, as Hitler told an enthusiastic Mussolini in 1934, ‘capitalism has run its course’.

One of the most stunning achievements of the modern Left is to have created a cultural climate where simply to recite these facts is jarring. History is reinterpreted, and it is taken as axiomatic that fascism must have been Right-wing, the logic seemingly being that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists were nasty. You expect this level of analysis from Twitter mobs; you shouldn’t expect it from mainstream commentators. Read more »

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.